'Written with all of Farmelo’s characteristic rigour and panache’Brian Cathcart

‘Farmelo offers a fresh history of the development of atomic weapons’Mary Jo Nye

'What a fantastic, compelling book!'Sir Michael Berry

'A fine work'Nicholas SambalukWest Point

Churchill’s Bomb

A hidden story of science, politics and war

Winston Churchill was a nuclear visionary, repeatedly warning before World War II that the nuclear age was imminent. Early in WWII, physicists in Britain showed that the Bomb could almost certainly be built. Prime Minister Churchill paid only fitful interest in the speculative weapon and the initiative soon passed to the US, which had the vast resources needed to realise the venture. British scientists played only a minor role in it. Churchill dismissed warnings from the Danish physicist Niels Bohr that Anglo-American nuclear policy would lead to an arms race. After the war, the US government declined to honour a personal agreement between Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill to share their countries’ nuclear research. After Churchill returned to power in 1951, during the Cold War, he became the first British leader to have nuclear weapons, and also commissioned the H-bomb. Appalled by the prospect of thermonuclear war, he ended his political career as pioneer of détente.

Eight themes of Churchill's Bomb

1. ‘A scientist who missed his vocation’

Churchill was interested in basic science – in 1926, he was captivated by atomic physics and chaired a talk seven years later on the epoch-making nuclear discoveries made at Ernest Rutherford’s Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.

‘All the qualities … of the scientist are manifest in him. The readiness to face realities, even though they contradict a favourite hypothesis; the recognition that theories are made to ﬁt facts, not facts to ﬁt the theories; the interest in phenomena and the desire to explore them, and above all the underlying conviction that the world is not just a jumble of events but that there must be some higher unity.’Lindemann talking about Winston Churchill, 15 March 1933

2. Nuclear visionary

As a journalist in the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill wrote several widely-read articles speculating on the possibility of nuclear weapons and the prospect of nuclear power.

Churchill article in the News of the World, 7 November 1937

Churchill’s article Fifty Years Hence published in The Strand Magazine, December 1931

‘There is no question among scientists that this gigantic source of energy exists. What is lacking is the match to set the bonﬁre alight … The scientists are looking for this.’ Churchill on nuclear energy (1931)’Churchill on nuclear energy (1931)

3. British first to see how to make the bomb

Shortly before Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, two ‘enemy aliens’ at Birmingham University – Otto Frisch and Rudi Peierls – the first understood how to make a nuclear weapon. British physicists developed their ideas, which were later fully realized in the Manhattan Project.

Otto Frisch (left) and Rudolf Peierls (right)

Clock Tower, University of Birmingham, a stones throw from where Frisch and Peierls wrote their memo in March 1940

‘As a weapon, the super-bomb would be practically irresistible. There is no material structure that could be expected to resist the force of the explosion.’Frisch-Peierls memorandum, March 1940

4. Churchill’s nuclear deal with FDR

Confronted with American attempts to shut down nuclear collaboration, in August 1943 Churchill signed a secret agreement with President Roosevelt. This enabled British scientists to re-engage with the Manhattan Project, and cemented an Anglo-American partnership. The deal fell apart after the War.

Franklin Roosevelt, Quebec, August 1943Signatures on the Quebec Agreement, August 1943

Group photo at the Quebec meeting, August 1943

5. Bohr fails to impress Churchill

In May 1944, the great Danish nuclear physicist Bohr met Churchill and warned him of the dangers of a post-War arms race. The meeting was a disaster. Bohr had a similarly fruitless meeting with FDR. Both leaders wanted nothing to do with Bohr’s ideas.

‘He scolded us like two schoolboys’ – Niels Bohr on Churchill, after meeting him and Lindemann

6. Churchill – britain’s first nuclear prime minister

Thanks to William Penney – ‘the British Oppenheimer’ – Churchill presided over the first detonation of a British nuclear bomb in 1952. He then promoptly commissioned the H-bomb despite terrified by the prospect of thermonuclear warfare.

Blue Danube, the first British nuclear weapon, delivered to the RAF in November 1953

William Penney, c. 1952

7. Octogenarian and nuclear experimenter

After leaving office, Churchill remained interested in the British nuclear programme. In his early eighties, during a visit to the British government’s nuclear research centre, he participated in an experiment to scatter neutrons.

Left and right: Churchill at Harwell, 30 December 1954, when he first took part in a nuclear experiment

8. Churchill’s legacy to science and technology

In the mid-1950s, Churchill decided to set up a new institution that would increase the number and the quality of Britain’s science and engineering graduates. The project became the building of Churchill College, Cambridge, whose first master was the nuclear pioneer John Cockcroft, one of Rutherford’s students.

Churchill visits the site of the Cambridge College named after him, 17 October 1959 (photo probably taken by Paul or Manci Dirac)

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What Reviewers are Saying

Lisa Jardine, Financial Times

'A story as gripping as it is elegantly argued ... a wonderful companion piece to one of the most authoritative books on this subject, Richard Rhodes's epic The Making of the Atomic Bomb.'Read the full review

Sir Max Hastings, Sunday Times

'[An] excellent book ... Farmelo is a splendid word-portraitist, and his book charts the odysseys, geographical as well as scientific, of the men who played a key role in developing the bomb ... authoritative and superbly readable.'Read the full review ($)

Peter Forbes, The Independent

'Graham Farmelo's very fine book ... illuminates the nexus between science, politics, war, and even literature better than anything I have read for some time. The issues it raises are both eternal and especially pressing now. It is not yet Book of the Year time but this has to be a contender.'Read the full review

Lawrence Freedman, Foreign Affairs

'In this terrific book, Farmelo ... demonstrates that although principles and evidence often shape the relationship between science and policy, personality and politics play just as large a role.'Read the full review

Claire Tomalin

'A remarkable and important book ... Graham Farmelo draws a highly readable and original portrait of Churchill as he dealt in secret with scientists and politicans over the development of nuclear weapons'

Paul Addison, Literary Review

'Superbly written, with a Lindemann-like flair for the translation of scientific data into layman's terms, it is a narrative driven by personalities ... and studded with memorable cameos of the scientists, politicians and bureaucrats involved.'

Nicholas Mancusi, Daily Beast

'This is a complex and engrossing history with obvious geopolitical import, but what's most interesting is the human drama involving Churchill, FDR, and the constellation of scientific egos circling around them. Farmelo also wonderfully draws out Churchill's surprising futurism...'Read the full review

Jeremy Bernstein, Wall Street Journal

'The Strangest Man ... is one of the best biographies of a scientist that I know. [Churchill's Bomb], like that one, shows a keen sense of the human comedy. Who were these people, and why did they behave the way they did?' Read the full review ($)

Michael Frayn

'A terrific narrative, which casts a new light on Churchill, the Allied atomic bomb project, and the history and aftermath of the Second World War.'

Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph

'Superb ... Few writers can make the mechanics of H-bomb production interesting: Farmelo can. Churchill’s Bomb, equally as good as his award-winning biography of the physicist Paul Dirac ... sheds light on a little-known aspect of Churchill’s life and does so with flair and narrative verve.'Read the full review

Piers Brendon, Guardian

In 'this dazzling book' ... 'Farmelo recounts this important story with skill and erudition'. Read the full review

Robin McKie, Observer

'Absorbing ... Farmelo's account of Churchill's atomic dreams perfectly captures the essence of the man and of the science of the day.' Read the full review

Daniel Johnson, The Times (UK)

'Churchill's Bomb tells [a] dramatic story and tells it brilliantly... Farmelo ingeniously interweaves the narratives of the nuclear scientists, many of them Jewish refugees from Germany, with that of Churchill in war and peace. As the Americans enter the picture the story becomes fiendishly complicated, but the author never loses the thread.'

Steven Shapin (Harvard University), LRB

'Compelling.... The value of Farmelo's book is in its meticulous attention to the contingencies, accidents, uncertainties, inconsistencies and idiosyncratic personalities in the story of how Britain didn't get the Bomb during the war and how it did get it afterwards. It could all have turned out differently – but it didn't.' Read the full review

Hank Cox, Washington Post

'On the eve of World War II, British scientists were well ahead of the United States in the basic research to make a nuclear weapon possible. How the United States wrested that leadership away from Great Britain is the topic of Graham Farmelo's account of a little-known aspect of the war.... [T]his is an interesting story.' Read the full review

Antoine Capet, Cercles

'Churchill's Bomb evidently fills an essential gap, and as such will be welcome not only among 'Churchill scholars', but also by a wider readership. … All University libraries should naturally have a copy of this superbly informative monograph, while it would make an excellent present for anyone, young and old, interested in Churchill' Read the full review

Gerard DeGroot, Physics World

'Intriguing .... [the book's] brilliance lies in the way the story is told, for it is a tale not just of physics or politics but also, more importantly, of people.' Read the full review

Bill Purdue, Times Higher Education

'Splendid and original ... in interweaving the political and scientific, Farmelo succeeds in making the latter beautifully clear even to readers with scant background in the subject.'Read the full review

Vin Arthey, The Scotsman

'... a page-turner ... scrupulously researched and superbly written ... Churchill's Bomb is a powerful and moving contribution to literature about the 20th century and to biographical and historical writing...'Read the full review

Martin Underwood, IHPST Newsletter, April-May 2014

'A very fine book. ... Graham Farmalo has produced a fine narrative and explains in a clear, lucid manner Churchill's often confused views on The Bomb and possible deployment.'Read the full review (PDF)

Katie Engelhart, Maclean's Magazine

'Farmelo's writing is lyrical - and is chock-full of personality. Readers will delight in ... the tale of Churchill's first meeting with Niels Bohr.'Read the full review

Publishers Weekly (US)

'Farmelo ends each chapter with a cliffhanger that will keep readers paging through this thoroughly researched, detailed history of Britain’s involvement with nuclear energy in the WWII era and beyond.... Farmelo’s prose moves quickly with much action .... Highly recommended for those with an interest in weaponry, the WWII era, and British history.'Read the full review

Nicholas Sambaluk, U.S. Military Academy, West Point

Benjamin Wilson, Physics Today

'Entertaining... the real strength of Churchill's Bomb rests with its lively sketches of British nuclear scientists and their world. Farmelo expertly draws their personalities and relationships, and their struggles with the Whitehall bureaucracy.'Read the full review

Jason Ridler, Failure Magazine

'Graham Farmelo reconstructs this intense, delicate, and near-Faustian story with wit, detail, and richness...' Read the full review

Norman Dombey, Contemporary Physics

'Farmelo ... has written another enthralling book which I think will be of great interest to both historians and physicists' Read the full review

Chris Wrigley, Journal of Modern History

'Churchill's Bomb is an outstanding work on international politics and the history of science... It deserves a wide audience.' Read the full review ($)

Christopher Coker, TLS

'Graham Farmelo shows ... that Churchill floundered when it actually came to building the Bomb after the USA entered the war...' Read the full review ($)

Roger Highfield

'A riveting, powerful and timely reminder that high politics is anything but rational. Graham Farmelo vividly reveals how Winston Churchill learned about atomic physics in the 1920s, warned about the imminence of nuclear weapons in the 30s and yet, paradoxically, squandered Britain's lead in the field during the Second World War.'

Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol

'What a brilliant and compelling book! Graham Farmelo sensitively and eloquently deconstructs the twists and turns of Winston Churchill's involvement with nuclear weapons over nearly half a century, setting this unfamiliar tale in the context of the turbulent times. At its heart are the ambiguities of the World War II relationship between a scientifically innovative but economically weakened Britain and the inexhaustibly energetic USA with unlimited resources.'

James W. Muller, University of Alaska

'An excellent book... Graham Farmelo draws on many sources to show how Churchill, his scientific adviser Frederick Lindemann, and a host of other scientists and politicians developed the atomic bomb. Churchill’s Bomb brings these characters back to life with anecdotes, quotations, and personal sketches. But Farmelo's book does more than unfold the hopes, doubts, and fears engendered by the Bomb: it illuminates the relationship between big science and modern democracy.'

Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University

'This is a fascinating book. Graham Farmelo offers a fresh and thoroughly researched history of the development of atomic weapons in his insightful and engaging account of Winston Churchill's failure to forge a partnership of equal exchange between Great Britain and the United States in the development of the bomb. Farmelo offers vivid vignettes of political and scientific personalities, with special attention to the widely disliked Oxford physicist Frederick Lindemann, who became Churchill's science and technology guru in the 1920s.'

Brian Cathcart, author of 'Test of Greatness'

'It has been rightly said that the arrival of nuclear weapons drew a line across history beyond which nothing could be the same again. This readable and ingenious book, by an outstanding historian of science, sheds a brilliant new light on the drawing of that line. The British role has been too long neglected and the Churchillian perspective is fascinating: both are revealed here with all of Farmelo's characteristic rigour and panache.'

Andrew Brown, author of biographies of James Chadwick and Joseph Rotblat

'Churchill's curiosity about science is perhaps the least studied aspect of his character. Graham Farmelo remedies that deficit in masterful style, beginning with Churchill's admiration for H G Wells and ending with a poignant portrait of the elderly statesman brooding over the prospect of nuclear Armageddon.'